Vets Vie For Cognac Endowed To `Last Man'

December 9, 1999|By FRANK VINLUAN The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — Hearing the same joke over and over might get tiresome. But Ray Sullivan still laughs whenever he shares this one with friend Herb Bridge. "Every time we see each other, we say, "How are you feeling?"' the healthy, 75-year-old Sullivan said.

Sullivan isn't expressing a callous disregard for his colleague's health. In fact, he'd like to drink to it. The two men are members of the Seventy-Niners, a "last man's club" of World War II veterans who meet annually to share the camaraderie of their experiences and jokingly speculate who among them will inherit a bottle of cognac from the end of the war.

"It's a good tradition; it's a fun tradition," Bridge said. "It's sad to lose your friends, but that's a fact of life when you get in your 70s."

The Seventy-Niners meet each year on Dec. 7, the anniversary of Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The date also gives the group its name. The numbers 12, 7, 19 and 41 add up to 79, and the club had 79 members when it was formed. Now the number of original Seventy-Niners is down to 17.

The last man alive inherits the bottle of cognac, from which he must toast the other 78 members of the club. That man will also inherit a trust fund to which members have contributed over the years.

The group has close to 50 living members, but only because associate members have been welcomed into the fold. Associates, who are also veterans, are welcome to the annual banquet and share all privileges of club membership except the honor of being the last man.

"If we let them have it, it wouldn't be a last man's club," Sullivan said. "But we hope they'll be around to share the bottle with the last man."

Over time, the nature of the annual gatherings has changed.

"In the early years, I think you can well imagine it was a large party with poker and craps games well into the night," Sullivan recalled. "As they aged, their boisterousness declined. They're no longer the firebrands of the 1940s."

The oldest members of the first Seventy-Niners are gone, and the origins of the now-legendary cognac cannot be verified. Sullivan says the most common version claims the bottle was brought from France at the end of World War II.

The platoon commander kept the bottle until the end of the war. It was eventually acquired by another soldier, who later became a member of the club and gave the bottle to the group's first president in 1948. It has since become the focal point of the annual banquet.

Bridge, a jeweler, stores the bottle during the year in a company vault, removing it only for the banquet.

When the bottle comes out this year, it will once again prompt discussion about who will be the last man. Bridge says the joke is on the others. "They decided to give it to me," he said with a laugh, "because I have a great chance of surviving."